Presents an article about how the Department of Interpersonal Communication at Bowling Green State University in Ohio established its credibility. Principles applied in administering the department; Importance of promoting a department\u27s image; Skills and attitude relevant to department chairperson

Makay, John J.

English

University of Central Florida (UCF): STARS (Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship)

JACA September 1999Journal ofthe Association for Communication Administration28(1999), 132-136Establishing the Department'sCredibility with CentralAdministrationJOHN J. MAKAYOver a period of ten years I had the opportunity to work as a chair of two depart-ments that needed to estahlish credihility with central administrators. From 1987to 19911 served as Chair ofthe Department of Communication at SUNY/Geneseoand from 1991 to 1997 as Chair of the Department of Interpersonal Communication atBowling Green State University, where I also served as Director of the School of Commu-nication Studies from 1995-1998. This paper presents some ofthe comments I have sharedin recent years with a numher of faculty, particularly colleagues who attended the work-shops I conducted at Bowling Green for new department chairs. Because "ethos" and"credibility" have been central in our theories of communication and persuasion I beginby reminding you of the importance we give to credibility.Credibility is a powerful concept. Our discipline recognizes credibility as a powerfulconcept that is central in our research and teaching. Thus, as communication administra-tors we should he particularly effective in working with our colleagues to estahlish depart-mental credibility. I suspect, however, that there are many units that have met with littlesuccess in building ethos on their campuses. Evidence of this problem on a national scalewas presented to me several years ago after I was asked to deliver the keynote address atthe New York State Speech Communication Convention. As part of my preparation I calledour national office and spoke with an associate director who was knowledgeable aboutdepartmental problems. My rhetorical strategy for the speech was to serve as a cheer-leader for the status of our discipline around the country as we entered the mid-1990s. Iwas told that the NCA was often contacted by departments which were facing one sort ofdifficulty or another with central administrators. This suggests that, while credibility isone or our most important elements in persuasion, departments on a considerable numberof campuses need to work to achieve greater credibility in the eyes of their administration.In this paper, I want to explain what our department did to increase its credibility.These explanations will be blended with ideas for establishing credibility given to me bythe three most important administrators I have worked with at Bowling Green State Uni-versity: President Sidney Ribeau, Provost Charles Middleton, and Dean C.J. Cranny. Mycomments are organized around four suggestions that form an argument about how to132JACA Makayestablish credibility with central administration. These suggestions have proven to be ofvalue to department chairs and were endorsed by the three administrators.1. Make an honest and accurate assessment of your department in light of the missionand goal statement of your institution. Include an assessment of what the departmentunderstands and believes to be the credibility it has with central administration.2. Determine what your department believes to be its strengths and its weaknessesand develop a reasonable plan to build on strengths and eliminate weaknesses.3. Determine what activities your college or university values and list them in theorder in which your faculty agrees it can best increase its credibility with centraladministrators.4. Embrace and implement two important metaphors for working toward increasedcredibility: team and family. Members of a team work together to strive to be winners andmembers of a family usually care about each other and the quality of their family life.The departmental inventory and planning required to follow these suggestions willlead to the development of an action plan that can result in a high level of credibility for adepartment. The key terms for such a plan include vision, context, promotion, and effec-tive use of resources.The department must create a vision of what it aspires to become. The faculty mustvisit this vision regularly in communicating both within its borders and to external con-stituents who play a key role in the outreach of the mission and the perceived credibilityof the department. While the chair of the department may be its key leader, the depart-ment must have other leaders; leadership is not the sole responsibility of the chair. Adepartment chair to be effective must be both a good manager and a good leader but, asmy dean reminded me several times, leadership should also emerge from others in thedepartment. The leaders must work collaboratively to fulfill the mission and achieve thegoals set by the department, not as adversaries challenging the authority of the chair.The credible department must be willing to acknowledge the context it shares withother academic units and link itself to other programs. This point was one that was dis-cussed in particular in my conversations with the provost. Turf wars are not uncommon inour academic environments but combativeness, rather than collaboration, drains valuableenergy from the faculty and ultimately leads to diminished departmental credibility withcentral administration. Far too often departments become overly anxious about "turf,"rather than the creation of symbiotic relationships and productive links that blur disciplin-ary boundaries.Bowling Green's President Ribeau, who also holds the rank of Professor of Interper-sonal Communication, underscored with me his belief that a department must have afaculty and leadership that has a strong sense of where the college or university is going.Key questions he raised in our conversation include: What is the mission of our institutionand what are its goals? How do the mission and goals of the department mesh with thoseof the college or university?A chair should turn to her or his faculty to seek answers to at least four major questions:1. What is our college or university attempting to accomplish?2. How does (or can) our department apply itself to the interests of our university andnot just the interests of our discipline and individual career paths?3. What priorities exist for the university and to what extent and in what ways do wecontribute to them?4. What expectations does our central administration have for our department in re-gard to the traditional categories of teaching, research, and service and how are theseactivities defined for us?133JACA September 1999a. How can we meet these expectations and significantly improve our credibility?b. What will we do to measure and assess what we are doing and accomplishing?In these days, when so many institutions are concerned about building and maintain-ing enrollments, a communication department must be concerned about having a strongcurriculum with a realistic balance between "theory" and "skills." Departments offeringgraduate programs, of course, must maintain a strong and contemporary theoretical com-mitment and, when educating professionals seeking career paths in organizational set-tings, the curriculum must be tailored to meet the professional challenges faced by orga-nizations of various types, from media companies to service units to huge corporations.Promote your department specifically to improve its image. One of the easiest waysto minimize credibility is for a department to fail to promote itself with central adminis-tration. Certainly we gain nothing positive by sending our administrators notes on everyon-campus or off-campus activity in which our faculty engages. But there are what I call"generic" and unique contributions we can make that are worthy of consideration by ourcentral administrators throughout the year (not just when documentation is necessary formerit increases). Administrators who know little about our discipline can recognize andapplaud important achievements that include well written convention or conference pa-pers, innovative teaching strategies, publications in refereed journals, and scholarly books,whether textbooks or reports of research findings. As Chair of the Department of Commu-nication at SUNY Geneseo, I made a regular effort to get good papers and other importantachievements to our Vice President for Academic Affairs and we produced a newsletterthat was circulated throughout the campus as well as to outside audiences. The newsletterfeatured reports, stories, and profiles that were rhetorically crafted to increase our cred-ibility. The VPAA always responded with positive messages about those accomplishmentswe promoted. My current dean has indicated a number of times that promoting the depart-ment with "good news" about research and instructional achievements is an excellent wayto improve the department's image. Being your campus' "best kept secret" or "little hid-den diamond" is not likely to enhance the credibility of your department.Be a visible member of the campus community. While it is not unusual to find onefaculty member in a typical department who plunges herself or himself into a consider-able pool of campus committees, it is also not unusual to find a considerable number offaculty members who consciously avoid college or university service. Upon arriving as anew department chair at Bowling Green State University, I was asked by the dean to leadthe department back into the campus community, as if I was assigned to a unit that hadbecome essentially an island unto itself. There are a great many college or universitycommittees, task forces, and boards that have important responsibilities, so everyone canparticipate in activity beyond departmental borders in ways that add credibility to a de-partment. For campuses that value service to professional organizations, faculty must bestrongly encouraged to become "active" members who participate on panels, boards, in-terest groups, or caucuses in our associations. This often requires a chair to fight for atleast adequate travel funds, give travel expenses priority in an operating budget, and com-municate to faculty where and how funds may be discovered elsewhere on campus. Doesyour institution have faculty development funds? Are probationary faculty on the tenuretrack provided with any special financial awards for presenting research at a conference orconvention? Is there a key official you can locate who has access to travel funds that youdo not have who may be willing to support someone with communication research toreport? If internal and national visibility is a core value in the action plan of a department,faculty must be motivated to get involved in activities beyond their departmental or per-sonal agendas.134JACA MakayRecognize that high credibility can result in increased resources. My experiences ledme to ask our faculty this question: Does our department have a "track record" that matchesits resources? Or, if our resources are adequate, are we delivering what our central admin-istration expects? If we do not have adequate resources, how can we obtain what we needfrom either internal or external sources? Shortly after taking over a position as departmentchair I began a quest for funding for technology: computers, video editing equipment,supplies, etc. As my rhetorical efforts began, during the honeymoon period new chairsoften experience, I found the administration making an effort to provide the equipmentand supplies I sought. One associate vice president for academic affairs told me: "John,the other chairs really appreciated the fact that the former chair never argued for much inthe way of resources so that left more for them to enjoy." By demonstrating to the centraladministration that the department had an ambitious vision in line with the one painted bythe president, and by taking steps to implement the vision, we were on the receiving endof considerable resources. We also received an obligation to reach goals the resourceswere to support. Several years ago my dean called to say:" I know your department is stillin the black but I have several thousand dollars to give you because we are nearing the endof our second semester and another department has not made the effort to use these funds.Can you use the money?" I am convinced the offer was extended because we had becomea credible department which used resources visibly and effectively. Other such instancesfollowed during my years as a communication administrator.Often, if a departmetit lacks credibility and is in trouble with its central adtnitiistra-tion, the problem is not that the administrators fail to understand or respect the disciplinebut that metnbers of the department are caught up in interpersonal and professionalstruggles that can lead to self destruction. When I have made this sort of claim to chairs,particularly ones in departments that suffered losses in status and resources on their cam-puses, I raised the ire of more than one chair whose department or programs had beenthreatened by an administration that, for one reason or another, was believed by faculty tobe "out to get the department." But why would administrators (even those pressed by aneed to cut departments in order to cut expenses) develop a belief that privileged almostevery department on a campus except communication studies or speech communication?Perhaps because faculty became so involved with competing and grumbling among them-selves that they could not collaborate to create programs of excellence in activities valuedby the college or university. Perhaps internal struggles made if difficult for members of adepartment to define the unit in any symbiotic relationship to its context. With unresolvedand continual conflict in a department, the productive leadership does not emerge andchairs either receive a no confidence vote or toss their keys on the desk and return to full-time teaching, or teaching and research. If a department wants to secure high credibilitywith the central administration, the faculty must resolve conflict collaboratively and notas adversaries. This is a department that determines what needs to be done, what it iscapable of doing, and with both relational and task goals established moves forward withintellectual integrity and eollegiality to become a visible and highly respected departmenton its campus and elsewhere.The chair who wants to establish credibility must set goals to lead the department toa higher level of standards and achievement. If excellence is to be more than a shallowterm for a department, the faculty must agree that reaching for a higher level of perfor-mance is necessary and attainable. The department that announces it is doing what itwants to do, is not going to change in positive directions. This is not a department thatsees possibilities and then pursues them with passion and determination. On the otherhand, the department that is made up of faculty sharing an inferiority complex ("no onerespects our program and that is not likely to change") is not unlike the ostrich with itshead stuck in the sand. Possibilities and opportunities can neither be seen nor pursued by135JACA September 1999this sort of gang. When positive energy gets a department moving and the movement isclearly visible and measurable, high credibility with central administration will be cre-ated. As growth continues, the credibility will be maintained if not increased further.REFERENCES AND NOTESJohn J. Makay (Ph.D., Purdue, 1969) is Professorin the School of Communication Studies,Bowling Green State University.136

Establishing the Department\u27s Credibility with Central Administration

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Establishing the Department\u27s Credibility with Central Administration

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